


So this is the world

by Joysweeper



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Andalites, Drowning, Gen, esplin is a bad leader, host pov, hugely failing at fridging women, low key background polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:53:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25230433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joysweeper/pseuds/Joysweeper
Summary: I'm not in it / It is beautiful. (Mary Oliver, October)Shortly after failing to secure the Time Matrix, Esplin goes in search of Alloran's family on the distant world where they study xenomarine biology.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 24





	So this is the world

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to thank Poetry for coming up with the opening line of the ritual!

<Form a perimeter, but quietly, and don't you dare move until I give the word. I want this to be a _surprise_ , do you understand?>

A series of deferential acknowledgements came back along the comm. Esplin settled back and watched them get into position over the screen, the little motes of flotation-equipped Hork-Bajir creating wakes in the deep water as they formed a circle around the floating scoop, screened by branching surface wrack. The encirling atoll kept waves to a minimum and so there was far more plant cover than out in the open ocean.

The Yeerk was all anticipation and constantly-changing plans. He would swap hosts and infest Jahar, and have the elegance that Aldrea had destroyed when she locked herself into that Hork-Bajir body. He would give her or her shorm to his twin and mend the rift between them, or to any of a number of friends for similar reasons. They wouldn't appreciate an Andalite body like he would but they would come around and be forever grateful. He would approach Jahar as a husband approached a wife and then kill her to savor her confusion and betrayal. He would approach her as her husband and tell her in a moment of intimacy. And on, and on. He could barely approach the possibility that the children were present. The one certainty in his mind was that he would acquire Jahar, an image that came again and again and that he showed to Alloran, again and again.

Alloran's only, faint hope had been that they were not here. No matter that no strong Andalite presence could be risked here, someone would have contacted them with the news. Jahar thought at length and his shorm-sister was practical. They would have put their heads together and realized that the Yeerk who took him would know everything he knew, and that this planet being so close to _Kelbrid_ space would mean nothing to Yeerks. But the scouts Esplin had sent had found the receiving satellite and the floating scoop and micro-pasture all present, and the cover for the elegant little pair-ship she had laughingly named the _Alloran_ intact. There was too much life on the planet to search for the life signs of an Andalite family, but scans had revealed that the scoop and pasture were active and using power, not even in standby as if the occupants were out for the day. Someone was in there.

Surely Sialin and Paraugad were on the homeworld, with their grandparents and cousins. The scoop and the pasture were confines far too small to keep them in for months and the location was all too risky. Surely they at least were safe. He clung to that.

There was no one on comms, which suggested that Nasil was out. Jahar hated answering comms and could keep a missive pulsing gently for hours until she felt like dealing with it. Her shorm was always prompt, though irritable about it sometimes. Esplin left a message in case either of them checked, something about having barely escaped and needing to see her again.

 _Leave her alone,_ Alloran tried again, already begging. _They have nothing you want. They are not warriors. You would get no new innovations about the fleet or ships or weaponry from them. Nasill speaks fiercely sometimes but they are both biologists. Jahar has a weakness in a joint of her right hind leg that morphing could not repair. She can't run like I can over rough ground or leap well. Sialin isn't even as old as Aldrea was on your homeworld and Paraugad is too young to infest at all. Please. Let them go._

It was a low, disgraceful thing to admit a partner's infirmary like that, but if it only worked-

<Oh, I know she's a step away from being a _vecol_ and her father's sister walks the secluded fields. Limps them, rather,> Esplin said around him, mixing vulgarity and the traditional words like an angry spy. <You haven't kept that from me any more than you've been able to keep anything else. But Jahar-aiita is beautiful, and you love her, and as every part of you is mine, so is your beloved, and your shorm-sister, and the two.>

The caress in his voice was nauseating. _You can't call any of them that. You don't have the right._

Esplin chuckled. <Oh, but I can. And you can't stop me.> He started to sing in thought-speech, weaving the mood of a tired warrior about to reunite with his beloved, with all the little sensory flourishes of warmth and the touch of hands that went with it, and even the dry undertones that always crept into Alloran's rendition. It made the Nahara-Controller at the helm twitch and cast an eye towards him.

And that was that, really. There was nothing he could do. His heartsrate kept starting to increase and returning to a slower rhythm, again and again. There was an ache in his body.

The _Jahar_ had gone through many changes, but from the exterior it was mainly simple scarring and replacement of hull. If they watched from the scoop they would not find it strange to think he hadn't kept it pristine, not with that cover of just having escaped. He watched in despair as Esplin's pilot brought the pair-ship down to a gentle landing at the edge of the floating scoop's platform.

The Yeerk hesitated, skimmed through memories he'd reviewed before, then unclipped the Andalite shredder he'd brought and left it on the ship. His family would notice immediately if he came to their home armed. It wasn't like he needed it, anyway.

The heavily textured platform was empty of all but sodden wreathes of wrack and small animals picking about in it. It smelled strongly of salt and decay. As Esplin hopped nimbly onto a relatively clear stretch Alloran bent all his will on his own body, trying to halt. Trying to drive his tailblade into the back of his head. _Jahar-aiita, run!_

His hooves opened and let in the richly bitter taste of salt-drenched alien plants. Esplin swiveled one of his stalk eyes to watch his tail twitch, the blade jerking and flicking in a muscle spasm. Entirely too soon Alloran tired in the effort. Esplin did not. His tail stilled to a tremble and stopped. His hooves closed again. The song didn't so much as falter. He hadn't said a word.

<Oh, honestly. You're a beautiful creature, but not very bright. Every Hork-Bajir I've ever had has tried very carefully to not plan and attempted rebellion when it thought I wouldn't notice. You've slowed me for a few seconds. I wonder how I might repay that?>

_Filthy slug! I'll trample your body when you die!_

Esplin just laughed and made his eager way across to the scoop. The micro-pasture was clear-domed and obviously unoccupied right now.

Out of necessity floating scoops like this, like he'd seen the pair living out of time and again, were much more enclosed than the more homey, traditional ones possible in more friendly environments. A scoop that had to keep out sea spray, irritating fauna, and inclement weather was a pace away from being military quarters, he had used to joke. Very like a miniaturized Dome.

There was no security. Of course there wasn't. This wet rock had no dangers that would breach the scoop, as far as he knew. The lock let him into the anteroom with its scrubbers that cleaned the salt from his legs, and then into the long grass of the scoop itself. The walls, opaque outside, were clear from within, so the scoop seemed to be a lush little island, raised on one side, with the platform as its beach.

<Jahar-aiita!> Esplin cried, bleeding uncertainty and longing and a certain painful happiness into his voice and the song, just as Alloran would have. Under it he was sparking, intense. <I came to see you! Save your work, won't you?>

There was an indistinct thought-speech murmur, and a rustling of seed-heavy grass tops in a spot near the center of the scoop. Impatienly Esplin waded out towards it, adding exasperation to his voice. <Can't we hold off on games? It's me. There's so much I have to tell you!>

The grass he pushed through was some unfamiliar species, lavender with darker striations, and long enough to bend against his belly. It had a rich bitterness something like the wrack outside and released a pungent scent as it was bruised. Why was it so long? He and Jahar both had pretty conventional tastes for highly trafficed spaces - they used dense, short varietals with mild tastes and faint scents, plants that could survive constant treading, didn't swallow small items without a trace, and were pleasantly unobtrusive. Nasill liked alien plants but she understood the practicality of conventional groundcover and usually just ran wild with the micro-pasture selection. Had she spliced this together, or taken it from one of the landmasses, and then they'd tread carefully so it grew this tall? Or-

It was plenty long enough that a woman could be reclining curled around a workpad, or asleep. Esplin stretched Alloran's tail out to clear the last stand out of the way, and he saw a small half-familiar Andalite shape waving its tail. For a horrible instant he thought it was Paraugad but it was wrong, somehow, the shape- Instantly Alloran's tailblade was at its throat.

<Oh! What a good _eshormat_!> it said. It was a doll! A robot made from soft and sturdy parts to resemble a stylized Andalite child. Someone had turned down its speech output and colored it to almost blend with the grass, and it had been left to use its tail to trouble a half-moon arc of the grass that grew higher than its fuzzy head. <You've been practicing!>

Esplin beheaded it. The doll cried, <Hey! That's no way to treat your toys!> before a more precisely aimed swipe of Alloran's tail made it fall inert.

<Jahar, that isn't funny,> Esplin said, his voice just barely more plaintive than annoyed.

Pushing past the dread that hung like a weight under his belly, Alloran commented, _I wouldn't threaten a small figure in my family’s scoop, and I would never destroy one of the childrens’ toys like that. You’re out of character, Yeerk._

The growth-mesh of the floor vibrated under his hooves, sending shivers up the stalks of grass, and there was a faint, odd sound. Then a too-familiar voice spoke.

<Alloran-oaida.> Jahar had appeared in the room, larger than life. By all rights Alloran's hearts should have stopped. He was spun to face her and could better see that her body clipped through the long grass like she was intangible. She was. She was a hologram! There must be emitters in the grass!

< _What,_ > Esplin growled, impatience warping his song. <Where are you!> Over his comm the Nahara-Controller on the ship tapped something about air bubbling from under the scoop, but no one was paying attention.

Even as a holo, Jahar was beautiful. Her hands were clasped, her tail held in a formal curve level with her back, and her face was filled with sorrow and resolve. Her bad leg was cocked as if it pained her, and the dyed red tips of the fur that ran down along her spine were faded and uneven. Like the rest of her fur, it was oily and blue-black, as it always got when she spent more than a day or two in and out of a saltwater environment. The straight, delicate spike of her tailblade shone pale as a star.

<I wish it had never come to this. Well. There is nothing here for you, Yeerk,> she said, and sang a measure of scornful defiance, fierce as a warrior, her tail raised and curled above her as if to strike. <I want to talk to my husband! If it has to be like this, so be it!>

Esplin wavered a moment, searching through Alloran's brain. Looking for what he'd say if accused of being a Controller, Alloran expected, but instead of keeping up the act he stopped singing and dropped the warmth and inflection from his voice. <You think you've won? I will find you. I will find you, and you will regret this deceit.>

Jahar's tail lowered to the horizontal curve again as she mused, <Alloran-oaida, it's petty but I wish you'd come with us instead.> Had she heard Esplin? Was this broadcast from some other place - she went on talking about what their life on this world could have been like, even as Esplin raised his voice to give orders into his comm to locate any signals coming and going, and snapped angrily on hearing that the shelter for the _Alloran_ was actually empty - or was it a recording?

Esplin turned away to search the scoop, but he kept one stalk eye on Jahar's image. The hologram of her tracked his movements with a slight delay, swivelling to face him, seeming to watch his hands and tail with her stalk eyes while gazing at his main eyes with her own. She tracked him in a too-smooth way that made Alloran think it _was_ a recording. He could hope, anyway. That would be safer. And she wouldn't have to see him like this, watch his body stamping back and forth, ransacking her home in a building rage.

<-the largest backed off when I morphed into our _mardrut_ friend. Don't fear. We weren't in real danger. If you were with me, we could have all acquired thassals and explored the sea together, and then made it into grand adventures to tell the two. And I know it's a dream that we would have been happy. You would have become bored and felt surplus here, and I know you can't stop worrying about the men and the war so easily. But I've missed you. I miss you. I will miss you.> His stalk eye wasn't focused on her hands but he saw them moving with the last few words. She had to be signing them. If Alloran's hands weren't paralyzed by Esplin's control, he would have signed too.

Jahar sang endurance as she went on. <I hate to leave this world and lose this setup, but we must put our work on hold. We'll take care of your father. It's a mercy that her memory is starting to go, you know. Your brother is furious. He called you an idiot in seven ways before even greeting us.> She gestured, indicating that there were things unsaid. Alloran could only imagine. He and Arbat had run down different trails through their whole careers, and 'retirement' meant something different to Arbat than it would have to him. <Nasill refuses to leave a message for you. I'm sure you already know what she thinks.>

That Alloran should have died before submitting to infestation. Yes... yes, he knew. He knew how she would have said it too - angrily, but to cover confusion and horror. Trying not to think too much about it, trying not to show how she felt. He and his shorm-sister were long past bristling at each other over Jahar.

<Arbat says that he spoke to the children and they don't really understand. That you were captured, but not the rest. I'll tell them when they're ready. All of it. We will be well.> Would they? The shame Alloran had already reflected on them was considerable. There was only evidence of one scoop here. It seemed like there had been only her and Nasill - even with how obscure the planet was, that seemed far too small after what happened to Seerow, Carrduen, Aldrea, and Barafin as a lone family on the Hork-Bajir homeworld. Had they been as disgraced as that, abandoned on some backrocket world?

It would only grow worse. Would Jahar's cousins and friends turn her aside? Nasill... well, she would stay. They were close, a steady couple. He'd always envied that. Alloran and his own adolescent shorm had cared for each other, of course they had, but their youthful connection had attenuated long before it was so finally severed.

And they would be safe. No matter what shame was laid on them, at least they would be safe on the homeworld. None of Esplin's fantasies would come to pass. As he allowed himself to feel relief the Yeerk pulled knowledge about scoop computers out of his mind, what little he had. The primary computer was nowhere to be found and the secondary system seemed to contain nothing but the kind of programming it needed to keep the scoop healthy and comfortable. _That won't help you. They won't have left any research you can use, Yeerk. Send any experts you like, those two remember how we failed the Nahara._

<You imagine them safe, but when we take your pretty world I will hunt them down if I have to go myself,> Esplin sneered. Alloran saw through the conviction. It was a possibility that the Yeerks would take the homeworld - more than it had been before he was infested - but it would not happen this year, or the next. The things Alloran knew about security and defenses became more out of date by the second.

Then the hologram of Jahar squeezed her main eyes shut. Her calm, dignified demeanor, the model of a warrior's wife, cracked and she sang half a measure of distress, as plain and untextured as a lost child younger than Paraugad. It was like he'd put a hoof wrong while running. Alloran would have cut his eyestalks from his head rather than do this to her.

From somewhere to the side Nasill's tail came down to lie along Jahar's back, seemingly disembodied. Jahar shifted her tail to hook it with her shorm's. She inhaled deeply, pulling her composure back into position piece by agonizing piece, and cupped her hands together as if to hold something delicate. <I hope you will die quickly and without pain, but I dream of your freedom and return to me one day. Alloran-oaida...>

When Jahar opened her eyes they were steady. <The lanterns are still lit for your return, but this night they grow dim. Soon we will stow them for the season's turning.>

He recognized the words. She was beginning the ritual appropriate to when a shorm or a spouse went missing in action, or vanished in some similar way. It drew from the one that went before a long, uncertain parting, but symbolically it lay between the recognition of death and the declaration of divorce. The lost had that lingering possibility of their body being identified or of maybe, someday, hypothetically returning alive, to loved ones who had tried to move on instead of staying, waiting.

 _I should have died_ , he wanted to say as she continued with that ritual calm. _It wasn't my choice._ But it was also on him. Not just for becoming more intent on killing Yeerks than recovering the Time Matrix, not just for misreading Elfangor and losing temper. Those, yes, but also a few weeks ago, when the Hork-Bajir-Controllers hadn't been entirely attentive as Esplin fed. Unthinking, he had tried to fight free and hurt them, to escape, instead of immediately killing himself. It was so easy now to see how he could have cut his own throat, shackles or not. Now the Yeerks were more cautious. They kept him sedated. He might have wasted his one chance, and left her in this position.

An urgent _crack-rattle taptaptap_ sounded from the Yeerk's comm, sharp and jarring in the way of Nahara speech. It was the Controller left on the _Jahar_. Alloran continued to listen to the ritual. Even a Yeerk couldn’t prevent him from hearing thought-speech, but he was made to also remain aware of whatever else was going on. 

"Visser, the bubbling under the construction has greatly increased. It is moving! Visser, I think it is sinking!"

Esplin twitched, flicking Alloran's tailblade. <What do you mean, sinking?>

The Nahara sputter-popped. "Visser, I mean it is going under the surface!"

<WHAT?> Esplin roared, wheeling, sending Alloran's eyes to the clear walls of the scoop. The water that had been near the level of the floor was higher now, approaching the tops of the grass. Now that he was made to pay attention, he could hear the air circulator working with more urgency, quite like it was venting, and there was - the scent of the grass was enough like the sea that he hadn't noticed the smell! The growth-mesh and the roots had disguised any water gathering on the floor, but as Esplin approached the exit it squished underhoof. The structure underneath must already be flooded.

The outer hatch was open, the anteroom belly-deep in rising water. The inner hatch was sealed. In its absurdly pleasant tones, the scoop's systems computer refused access. <I’m sorry, but we are experiencing inclement weather. Please remain inside until it is safe to leave the scoop.>

<Override,> Esplin snapped. He sidled, feeling the long fur on Alloran's lower legs growing damp. By then, the ritual was finished and Jahar's image had gone. Alloran missed her voice already.

<You do not have authorization to override the safety precautions. Please contact a system administrator.>

<Idiot machine! The door was obviously sabotaged and the only danger is in you, _not opening!_ >

No response. The secondary computer didn't have that kind of sophistication. Esplin struck the hatch several times with Alloran's tail, trying to cut through the polymer or pry it open. All that happened were some deep scars forming only to slowly fill back in, and a building pain down his jarred spine.

 _The scoop is rated for protection against wildlife. As I recall some very large and alarming creatures have tried breaching it and failed,_ Alloran said, forcing himself to find grim amusement in the situation. This couldn't possibly kill Esplin but it would be such a mark on his pride if he not only had nothing to show for this little excursion, but also needed to be _rescued by his own forces_. Especially after he'd so recently and dramatically failed to secure the Time Matrix, Elfangor, and the two bipedal aliens, salvaging only the _Jahar_ and even that with its entire computer system wrecked and needing replacement.

<Be silent.> Esplin splashed back to the interface for the secondary computer and started looking through the system again. He had a good grasp of Fleet software, better than Alloran's own. Of course, Fleet computers were made to be accessible to technophobic old warriors. Civilian computers, especially scientists' computers, had a different design. Particularly the computers of scientists with children who might poke around where they weren't supposed to, and which had been abandoned with the knowledge that a hostile force would attempt access.

Esplin managed to figure out the setting that brightened or darkened the walls and sent the holographic rendition of a scoop cover closing and opening again, but as he seethed and lost patience his commands and manual interactions with the interface became more erratic. Over the comm, the Nahara and one of the Hork-Bajir-Controllers made worried observations and offered assistance. They were rejected with less and less grace.

It was getting darker as the scoop sank, as the level outside went above his head. The water outside was clear, revealing that the wrack that piled in miserable hummocks at the surface was the canopy of a great forest of leafy green and purple columns. Animals Alloran didn't have the vocabulary to properly describe climbed them, darted among the translucent leaves, or dodged between them. Sleek things, whiskery things, lumpy things. Most were small or distant, but a medium sized creature with a body patterned like an eye rippled past not twenty feet away, trailing very long rodlike tentacles in yellow. It was a graceful contrast to the lower bodies of the Hork-Bajir, stuck to the surface with their flotation collars and flailing their limbs so they could cluster close around the scoop.

Jahar must have loved it here. It was so easy to see how fascinated she must have been. Her shorm was the one who had really experienced that side of her. Alloran had always been the love who came and went, all partings and joyful reunions. Nasill knew the colors of all her moods and would have shared in them herself. He could find a little bit of happiness imagining them here, before his capture had destroyed it.

Esplin swore. Wading now he found the main air vent, stood on Alloran's back hooves, and worked at it with hands and tail, pulling the baffles out an instant before the water closed over the top of the scoop. It poured through the opening in a deafening torrent, drenching him, swirling the drowning grass and making the descent go all the faster.

 _Oh, well done. You have less grasp of cause and effect than an Academy washout. I clearly can't fit through that._ If he didn't think too much about it it was oddly compelling sensing the Yeerk going through options for escape. Esplin thought more quickly in this situation, sorted more rapidly through Alloran's memories. The mardrut wouldn't fit inside the scoop at all. The Taxxon would probably not be able to chew up the polymer fast enough to fit through before drowning. Other morphs...

Despite the circumstances, Esplin could apply what Alloran knew about the morphing-arts better than he ever had himself, from the focus to the clear and intricate picture of the animal and how it was put together. Besides that, djabala were much more like Andalites than any given alien species. It was a fast morph, despite his head ducking underwater halfway through.

Undulating a bladeless tail for propulsion and steering by paddling all six feet, Esplin lurked near the surface, giving orders in thought-speech and abandoning the comm to mix with the dismembered doll and the other items drifting in the flooding scoop. He breathed the diminishing amount of air through a narrow snout, eyeing the vent and the pale, dancing surface above. Seeming curious, the eye animal circled closer. It was either looking at him or doing a good job of seeming to, holding position with its eye-pattern facing him and the pupil shape moving. Its main body was larger than he was right now.

A profoundly unhappy Hork-Bajir-Controller, silver bubbles clinging to her head and neck, sank collarless to the domed upper surface of the scoop. She hit and scrabbled for purchase, sliding until she managed to drive her ankle blades into the polymer. Taking a final breath Esplin chsed the last of the air up the vent and was grasped between her clawed hands, blinking and squinting through the salt.

The Controller pushed off from the dome and tried to kick for the surface, surging up through the water and starting to sink again almost immediately. Hork-Bajir were designed to be dense and sturdy and tended towards very little fat. Without artificial flotation they could only stay at the surface with filled lungs and great exertion.

<Throw me.>

The Hork-Bajir-Controller held him to her chest and thrust him upwards. As soon as he was clear he relaxed into the morph’s instincts and started to propel himself. Like Hork-Bajir, djabala were mostly arboreal, but lighter and less fast and powerful. They swam decently.

Esplin didn’t spare an eye to watch his Controller sink. Alloran could hear her clawing at the water more and more faintly and imagine it well enough. Throwing him would have pushed her further down and even with her arms free now she wasn’t going to be able to reach the surface. She would have known this was likely from the moment Esplin gave the order. Even now, Alloran was getting Hork-Bajir killed.

Maybe it was some comfort to die here, surrounded by plants that looked like great leafy-trunked trees. Maybe it was more comfort that her Yeerk would die with her. Even if it left her ear and was overlooked by predators, it wouldn’t last long in the salt and Esplin had no thought of recovering it. He had brought no technology or host bodies that could search the depths, and just as importantly did not care.

The eye animal had stayed in view, maybe wary of the Hork-Bajir. Now it rippled closer, body flexing. One narrow tentacle cut through the water, tapped his forelimb, and cut away again. That part of his limb went numb instantly. It moved more slowly, stiffly.

 _A poison,_ Alloran mused, and then, _But not washed away by being underwater. A venom delivered by stinging cells? Ah! Maybe the venom will spread and I can drown too._

He had a sense of strange, intense pride at the thought that his family might kill him. That his wife and shorm-sister had put their heads together in the middle of evacuation and planned for his death. They were such amazing women and he loved them so dearly.

Oh, yes, they would feel terrible if it worked, and they might still never know. But there would be justice in it too.

<Fantasy,> Esplin scoffed, and pointedly accessed a memory from years ago, when Alloran had visited his family on their site on some other wet rock, and he’d proposed killing some kind of great yellow serpent that had investigated them and been shooed off. Jahar had scolded him. With a few terrifying exceptions, alien predators didn't just relentlessly pursue and attack visitors that bore no resemblance to their usual prey.

 _An Andalite is unlike anything on this planet, but you chose djabala. There are animals propelling themselves with long tails on every life-bearing body of water in the galaxy,_ he retorted. Another tentacle whipped to tap him on the same limb, numbing it further. Then to his tail. It slowed, and Esplin had to paddle more to correct for drift. _Yes, go on and tell your sad excuses for soldiers to fire on this thing._

His lungs were burning. The djabala’s instincts yearned for the surface, still some fifteen or twenty feet away. Another Hork-Bajir-Controller had shed his flotation collar to dip his head underwater, supported by his collared fellows.

As he had in the scoop falling away below him, Esplin was thinking fast. He watched the eye-animal as it stung him a few more times. Except at the bases there was very little muscle in these tentacles. Alloran’s shorm-sister would probably talk about the tradeoffs there. Prioritizing speed versus the ability to grasp and manipulate.

A tentacle flicked across his face and oh, it hurt this time. Bubbles trickled from his snout. The eyes on that side of his head went blurry for a moment. The djabala had no instinctual defense for this. All it wanted was to flee.

_Go ahead and ignore it, see if we make it. So. What would you prefer? That that thing has teeth somewhere, or the venom is quietly liquefying both of us? Oh, yes, do try demorphing. I’m sure you can make it without having to take a breath._

Esplin riffled through memory and found the one where a very young Alloran encountered a djabala on the ground, accompanied by its half-grown offspring. He had been delighted to see the adorable animals. The adult had reared up onto its back legs and tail, stretching out its fore and mid legs in what seemed like a welcoming gesture. Fortunately, Alloran’s own parents had kept him from getting closer and explained that the djabala was scared and would have scratched him if he came too close. The gesture really showed off its sharp, hooklike climbing claws.

Watching the eye animal’s body flex, Esplin readied himself and tried to intercept the next tentacle. Missed, and was stung again. In the moment of his distraction Alloran opened the mouth in his djabala chest and tasted the bitter water around him, delighted that he could do so.

<You are going to pay for making this harder,> Esplin growled, closing his mouth. Above and very close now, the uncollared Hork-Bajir-Controller clung with one hand to the tail of a floating one, hanging in the water and reaching for him.

_That is very dramatic, Yeerk. How many more times can I be stung before you can’t correct for the drift?_

Despite Alloran’s efforts, Esplin kept sculling his tail and managed to catch the next tentacle as it whipped at him, grasping it between two paws and cutting at it with the claws on his midlimbs, ignoring as the tip writhed and the animal pulled. The yellow tentacle was firm and segmented; when it broke, it was cleanly and between segments.

It was too much effort, too much time without a breath. Sparks obscured his vision and every part of his body hurt. Grimly Esplin swam on, even as Alloran wondered if he was even going up anymore. Unfortunately a clawed hand grasped him behind the neck. The uncollared Hork-Bajir-Controller climbed his collared companion back to the surface, hauling Alloran up with him. He had a last glimpse of the eye animal rippling away and then he was raised out of the water, gasping and coughing.

The sky was a pale, delicate red above, shading deeper and bluer towards the horizon. Pale clouds showed lined in pink where the star’s light hit them just so. He hadn’t seen them, not like this.

Esplin demorphed rapidly as soon as he was deposited back onto the platform, breathing heavily until all of the damaged or oxygen-starved tissue was replaced. A torn-off segment of tentacle was still clinging to his hand, making it stiff and odd-feeling. It wasn’t dead yet. Esplin focused on it, on the easy way the eye animal had moved and the way its long tentacles darted in and back, and acquired it. The piece went still. He let it fall.

The surviving Controllers flinched as he rounded on them. <Idiots! There were no Andalites in that scoop! Your negligence got Isslin Two-Six-Three killed. And her host! We don’t have enough Hork-Bajir to waste on nonsense like this!>

 _Yes,_ their _negligence. I'm certain that this will do wonders for loyalty._

<Be silent.>

The Nahara-Controller came out of the _Jahar_ , sputter-crackling anxiously. Alloran tried to strike them, riding the Yeerk’s annoyance. Enough got through that his tail twitched before Esplin stopped him. 

Some of the string-of-beads pupils in the Nahara’s immense eyes dilated in that complicated way they had - they had noticed the movement. _They're going to report back saying you can't control me properly._

Immediately Esplin swung Alloran's tail in a diagonal cut, through what served the Nahara as a neck. Its soft head splattered on the platform and pulsed as the Yeerk inside tried to escape. <They will _not_.> In public thought-speech he said, <And don’t abandon an active ship to babble useless apologies, you absolute fools!>

There was enough neural tissue in the rest of the Nahara's body that they tried to scuttle away. Without their eyes or scent-tongues or most of their brain they - 'it' was more appropriate now - ran right off the platform and splashed frantically in the water. It could be saved. Alloran had fought in the Nahara war before being assigned to Seerow, he remembered how they worked. If someone hauled it out and put food at its mouth-end it would regenerate a new head and sensory organs eventually, though they wouldn’t quite be the same person or remember the last few hours before being decapitated.

Esplin used his tail to pitch its head and Yeerk out after it and went into the ship, not looking back. He tread the dry, bare growth-mesh to stand at the controls, indifferent to whether the other Controllers took the Nahara with them onto the drop ship or left it to drown.

 _If I can do that again you’ll keep killing your own people just so they won’t tell anyone the Andalite-lover can’t handle real Andalites,_ Alloran mused.

Esplin’s tone was cold. <You cannot. I have been lenient for too long, and now I can spare the effort. Know that you brought this upon yourself.>

The memory rose up and engulfed him, clarified into hyperreality. He was back on the Hork-Bajir homeworld, breathing the stink of burnt flesh and sliced bowels as he searched for survivors after a ground battle from late in the war. Of course he was dully hoping to find his old shorm among the living, of course it was still a sickening spike of cold to see his body in a pile.

...And yet it wasn’t overpowering or overwhelming like it had been the first times Esplin had submerged him in memory to subdue him. This time Alloran could think around it, could dimly sense what his body was really doing and the orders Esplin gave.

Maybe without him Jahar and Nasill would marry. It was painful to think about, but there was something freeing about knowing Jahar had performed the ritual. She or her shorm would become father to Sialin and Paraugad. He wouldn't be part of that decision, and he would miss the shedding of their childhood names and the adoption of the names the children would carry for the rest of their lives. Sialin, almost at that age, had been methodically considering options the last time they'd spoken.

He was something like dead, and the people he loved knew and would live the lives before them. Even mired in terrible memories, he could imagine watching them coming together in this dark time and finding their way to being content.

**Author's Note:**

> [My concept](https://joysweeper.tumblr.com/post/189394242617/so-i-designed-one-of-the-one-mention-aliens) for a Nahara.
> 
> I like to imagine that some of Alloran's numerous aquatic morphs are animals his family studied. This is also tying in some headcanons I have, like that Alloran can occasionally manage some host rebellion in opening his hooves and twitching his tail. That's why Esplin is concerned about being in a Pool full of instant maple and ginger oatmeal, and he tends to cover for the twitches by killing people who'll note them.
> 
> Also, please picture djabalas as resembling retriever-sized tamanduas with six legs, four eyes, and different colors. And mouths in their chests.


End file.
